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SIEUR DE MONTS PUBLICATIONS 



IX 



The Sieur de Monts National Monument 



A .V Co m me mora ting 

Acadia and Early French Inflnences of Race and 
Settlement in the United States 




ISSUED BY 

THE WILD GARDENS OF ACADIA 
BAR HARBOR, MAINE 



Collected sei 










S 






D. of D. 
NOV 30 1917 



SIEUR DE MQNTS PUBLICATIONS 

IX 

The Sieur de Monts National Monument 

As Commemorating 

Acadia and Early French Influences of Race and 

Settlement in the United States 

George B. Dorr 
The Sieur de Monts National Monument combines in 
a remarkable way three separate aspects: It is an ex- 
traordinary Nature Monument, as such are termed 
abroad, fitted to exhibit and preserve its regional life 
in the widest range a single area can, and to set forth 
its region's geologic history; it is a great Recreation 
Area, a park in the true popular sense, capable in the 
highest degree of drawing city-wearied men and sending 
them away refreshed and stimulated; and it is a Historic 
Monument of singularly impressive character whose 
ancient granite heights, sculptured in bold relief by ice 
and sea, commemorate as they look out across the stormy 
wilderness of the North Atlantic the men who sailed 
across that wilderness in early days from ports of west- 
ern France to settle on the Acadian shores or fish in the 
Acadian seas. 

The first commissions that resulted in permanent settle- 
ment on the American continent to the north- of Florida 
were issued by Henry of Navarre, Henry IV of France, 
in December, 1603, to Pierre du Guast, Sieur de Monts 
and Governor of Pons, a Huguenot of noble family who 
had served the King faithfully through the recent wars 
and stood high in his esteem. 

De Monts, then not over thirty years of age and in his 
prime, was a native of Saintonge, a district facing on 
the Bay of Biscay between La Vendee and Bordeaux, 

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which was the home of Champlain also who accompanied 
him to the Acadian shores. Born of one of the most 
ancient families of France, that had served the Crown 
for centuries iwith credit and distinction, all accounts 
agree in praise of him as a brave and gallant gentleman. 
Chami)lain who later wrote the history of the enterprise 
speaks of him ever in terms of warm regard, and states 
that the King had "great confidence in him for his fidelity, 
as he ever showed, even to his death — ," while the Jesuit 
missionary Francis Xavier de Charlevoix, writing over 
a century later, described him, though a Huguenot, as 
"a most honorable man of upright views and zealous for 
the State, who had every quality necessary for success 
in the enterprise committed to his charge." Court in- 
trigues and powerful trading influences seeking to control 
the valuable fur-trade rights which had been granted him 
and his associates to meet the expense of new colonial 
establishments on a yet savage coast, forested to the 
water's edge, wrested at length his charter from him, to 
be restored again, then lost again, till the assassination 
of Henry IV, by a fanatic, on the 14th of May, 1610, in- 
volved in a common ruin de Monts and the best interests 
of France. 

The Jesuits took up in turn the work de Monts had left, 
establishing a colony in 1613 at Mount Desert, the first 
land touched on by Champlain within the limits of the 
United States, when, in September, 1604, he sailed out from 
its future boundary at the mouth of the St. Croix, where 
de Monts was establishing his first colony, to explore 
the neighboring coast. For a century after, till the peace 
of Utrecht, France continued to hold the land it called 
Acadia, a name which included until then the magnifi- 
cently harbored coast of eastern Maine as well as Nova 
Scotia and New Brunswick. 

Had France, moved by the spirit of Henry IV and de 
Monts, made some present sacrifice to consolidate what 
their and other early enterprise had won instead of plung- 

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ing again upon the death of Henry into factional politics 
and religious strife, she probably and not Anglo-Saxon 
nations would have controlled the larger destinies and 
develoi3ment of this continent. 

It was a time of new beginnings when mighty rivers of 
future history were gathering their first waters and es- 
tablishing their yet doubtful course. France, through 
the enterprise and adventurous spirit of the early 
mariners and nobles on her western coasts, fronting the 
Atlantic, won the first advantage in the occupation of the 
new continent discovered on its opposite shores ; she lost 
her opportunity through the triumph of reactionary j)oli- 
tics and selfish privilege which culminated in the French 
E evolution's fearful travail after thwarting for genera- 
tions the best energies of the nation and destroying 
largely or sending into exile her best blood. 

The French Dominion 

Francis Parkman 
The French dominion is a memory of the past; and 
when we evoke its departed shades, they rise upon us 
from their graves in strange, romantic guise. Again 
their ghostly camp-fires seem to burn, and the fitful light 
is cast around on lord and vassal and black-robed priest, 
mingled with wild forms of savage warriors, knit in close 
fellowship on the same stern errand. A boundless vision 
grows upon us ; an untamed continent ; vast wastes of 
forest verdure ; mountains silent in primeval sleep ; river, 
lake, and glimmering pool; wilderness oceans mingling 
with the sky. Such was the domain which France con- 
quered for Civilization. Plumed helmets gleamed in the 
shade of its forests, priestly vestments in its dens and 
fastnesses of ancient barbarism. Men steeped in antique 
learning, pale with the close breath^ of the cloister, here 
spent the noon and evening of their lives, ruled savage 
hordes with a mild, parental sway,* and stood serene be- 
fore the direst shapes of death. Men of courtly nurture, 

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Leirs to the polish of a far-reaching ancestry, here with 
their Lnntless l,ardihoocl, pnt to shame the boldest sons 

"^Itt'a u.en,orable but half-forgotten chapter in tl,e book 
of hnman life that can be rightly read only by widely 
scattered lights. 



^Y. F. Ganong 
striking description of the landing of de Mf''""^ 
Ckamplain to lay the first foundations of ^<=-fp^^ 
from address delivered at the Ter-Centennud Celebra- 
tiou held at tit. Croix Island on June 25th, 1904, m 
,rhich France, England and the United States tvere all 
ofjicially represented. 

Three centnries ago today all the northern part of 
America was one vast wilderness and all >ts mighty 
fweep of forest and plain a solitude, save only where the 
mtle groups of Indian lodges clung to the shores of its 

'"i^'lie'ear 1604 over a century had already elapsed 
since Columbus had found the New World, ancl since 

C ot ii^d explored its -''''-f "^ ^^^ ^"jj/t^er 
and marked it for the empire of the Anglo-Saxon. Over 
'^ Quarters of a century had passed since Verrazano 
ad explored the same coast for France; and nearly as 
loit s nee earlier had carried the fieur-de-^'s up the 
l"t Tawrence laying the foundation for the French do- 
nintr 11 America! Both nations had thus . acquired 
Xi to this continent, but neither had obtained any 
too old ^ipon it. Both, indeed, had attempted settle- 
ment Wie English ill Newfoundland and Virginia, and 
fte French al Quebec and Tadonssac; but both had 
fa led Upon the whole continent only the Spaniard had 
deeded! for he had planted a small - «™en in 
Florida and others around the Gulf of Mexico, 



where, and everywhere to the northward, there was only 
wilderness. 

Such was the state of North America, when, on a fair 
midsummer day, just three centuries ago, a tiny vessel 
came sailing along the lonely Fundy coast from the east- 
ward and turned her prow to the river on whose historic 
banks we are now standing. She was a tiny craft that 
thus appeared out of the unknown, for she was no larger 
than the fishing sloops we know so well in our Quoddy 
waters today. She carried about a dozen men, of whom 
two bore the unmistakable stamp of leadership. 

One was a prominent gentleman of France, lofty in 
spirit, devoted in purpose, trusted of his King, the com- 
mander of the company, Sieur de Monts. The other was 
one of the great men whom France has given to the 
world, a remarkable combination of dreamer and man 
of swift and wise action. The intentness of his gaze as 
one new feature after another unfolds itself along the 
coast, and his constant use of compass and pencil, shows 
him to be the geographer and chronicler of the expedition. 
He was the first cartographer and historian of Acadia, 
Samuel de Champlain. 

But the little vessel is coming nearer; she reaches 
our beautiful Passamaquoddy islands ; she winds her 
cautious and curious way among them; she crosses the 
spacious bay ; she enters our noble river ; she sails up 
the hill-bordered valley; she reaches the island where 
today we placed our memorial, then unbroken forest; 
her sails are furled ; the leaders step ashore and, with 
the air of men who have ended a weary search, declare 
that it is good and that here they will plant the capital 
of the New World. 

Whence came this little vessel! What carried she that 
we should here assemble three centuries later, to cele- 
brate her coming? 

She was the herald of the permanent occupation of 
the northern part of America by Europeans. From the 

8 



day the keel of her small boat grated on the beach of 
St. Croix Island, this continent has never been without 
a popnlation of those races which have made the history 
of the principal part of America, — the French and the 
English. We celebrate today not only an event of great 
human interest, but one of the momentous circumstances 
of history, the actual first step of North America from 
barbarism over the threshold of civilization, and the first 
stage in the expansion of two of the most virile races 
of Europe into the wonderful New World. 

Note by Editor. — De Monfs had left his well- equipped 
and furnished larger vessel in- safe moorings at St. 
Mary's Bag, upoti the Nova Scotia coast — opposite 
Mount Desert Island, at the eastern entrance to the 
Bay of Fundy — irhile he and Champlain searched out, 
in the little barque of a few tons described, a site upon 
the unknown shore beyond for their first colony. 



Acadia at the End of the Seventeenth Century 
Francis Parkman 

Amid domestic strife, the war of France with Eng- 
land and the Iroquois went on. Each division of the war 
was distinct from the rest, and each had a character of its 
own. As the contest for the West was wholly with New 
York and her Iroquois allies, so the contest for Acadia 
was wholly with the "Bostonnais," or people of New 
England. 

Acadia, as the French at this time understood the 
name, included Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and the 
greater part of Maine. The river Kennebec, which they 
looked on as the true dividing line between their posses- 
sions and New England, they regarded with the most 
watchful jealousy. Its headwaters approached those of 
the Canadian river Chaudiere, the mouth of which is 
near Quebec ; and by ascending the former stream and 

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crossing- to tlie headwaters of the latter through an 
intricacy of forests, hills, ponds and marshes, it was 
possible for a small band of hardy men to reach the 
Canadian capital — as was done long after by the fol- 
lowers of Benedict Arnold. Hence, it was thought a 
matter of the last importance to control the river. 

Since the wars of D'Aunay and La Tour, this wilder- 
ness had been a scene of unceasing strife; for the Eng- 
lish drew their eastern boundary at the St. Croix, and 
the claims of the rival nationalities overlapped each 
other. 

Along the lonely coasts one might have sailed for 
days and seen no human form. At Canseau, at the east- 
ern end of Nova Scotia, there was a fishing-station and 
a fort; Chibuctou, now Halifax, was a solitude; at La 
Heve there were a few fishermen; and thence, as you 
doubled the rocks of Cape Sable, the ancient haunt of 
La Tour, you would have seen four French settlers and 
an unlimited number of seals and sea-fowl. Eanging the 
shore by St. Mary's Bay and entering the Strait of 
Annapolis Basin, you would have found the fort and 
settlement of Port Eoyal, the chief place of all Acadia. 
It stood at the head of the basin, where de Monts had 
planted his settlement eighty or one hundred years be- 
fore. At the head of the Bay of Fundy were two other 
settlements, Beaubassin — the Beautiful Basin — and Les 
Mines — the Place of Mines, comparatively stable and 
populous. At the mouth of the St. John were the aban- 
doned ruins of La Tour's old fort; while at some dis- 
tance up the river stood the small wooden fort of Jem- 
sec, with a few intervening clearings. Still sailing west- 
ward, passing Mount Desert — another scene of ancient 
settlement — and entering Penobscot Bay, you would have 
found the Baron de Saint-Castin, with his Indian house- 
hold, at Pentegoet, where the town of Castine now stands. 
All Acadia was comprised in these various stations, more 
or less permanent, together with one or two small posts 

10 



on the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the hnts of an errant 
population of fishermen and fur-traders. 

Rude as it then was, Acadia had charms — and has 
them still — in its wilderness of woods and its wilderness 
of waves; the rocky ramparts that guard its coasts; its 
deep, still baj-s and foaming headlands; the towering 
cliffs of Grand Menan; the innumerable islands that clus- 
ter about Penobscot Bay; and the romantic highlands 
of Mount Desert, down whose gorges the sea-fog rolls 
like an invading host while the spires of firs and spruces 
pierce the surging vapors like lances in the smoke of 
battle. Leaving Pentegoet and sailing westward all day 
along a solitude of woods, one might reach the English 
outpost of Pemaquid, and thence, still sailing on, might 
anchor at evening off Casco Bay, and see in the glowing 
west the distant peaks of the White Mountains. 

Inland, Acadia was all forest, as vast tracts of it are 
primeval forest still. Here roamed the Abenakis with 
their kindred tribes, a race wild as their haunts. Their 
villages were on the waters of the Androscoggin, the 
Saco, the KennebeC', the Penobscot, the St, Croix, and 
the St. John; here in spring they planted their corn, 
beans, and pumpkins, and then, leaving them to grow, 
went down to the sea in their birch-canoes. They re- 
turned towards the end of summer, gathered their har- 
vest, and went again to the sea, where they lived in 
abundance on ducks, geese, and other water-fowl. During 
the winter, most of the women, children, and old men 
remained in the villages; while the hunters ranged the 
forest in chase of moose, deer, caribou, beavers, and 
bears. 

Their summer stay at the seashore was perhaps the 
most pleasant, and certainly the most picturesque, part 
of their lives. Bivouacked by one of the innumerable 
coves and inlets that indent these coasts, they passed 
their days in that alternation of indolence and action 
which is a second nature to the Indian. Here in wet 

11 



weather, while the torpid water was dimpled with rain- 
drops and the upturned canoes lay idle on the pebbles, 
the listless warrior smoked his pipe under his roof of 
bark; or launched his slender craft at the dawn of the 
July day, when shores and islands were painted in 
shadow against the rosy east, and forests, dusky and 
cool, lay waiting for the sunrise. The women gathered 
raspberries or whortleberries in the open places of the 
woods, or clams and oysters in the sands and shallows, 
adding their shells to the shell-heaps that have accumu- 
lated for ages along these shores. The men fished, 
speared porpoises, or shot seals. A priest was often 
in the camp watching over his flock, and saying mass 
every day in his chapel of bark. There was no lack of 
altar candles, made by mixing tallow with the wax of 
the bayberry, which abounded among the rocky hills and 
was gathered in profusion by the squaws and children. 

Some of the French were as lawless as their Indian 
friends. Nothing is more strange than the incongruous 
mixture of the forms of feudalism with the independence 
of the Acadian woods. The only -settled agricultural 
population was at Port Royal, Beaubassin, and the 
Basin of Minas. The rest were fishermen, fur-traders, 
or rovers of the forest. Repeated orders came from the 
court to open a communication with Quebec, and even 
to establish a line of military posts through the inter- 
vening wilderness ; but the distance and the natural diffi- 
culties of the country proved insurmountable obstacles. 

If communication with Quebec was difficult, that with 
Boston was easy; and thus Acadia became largely de- 
pendent on its New England neighbors, who, says an 
Acadian officer, "are mostly fugitives from England, 
guilty of the death of their late King, and accused of 
conspiracy against their present sovereign; others of 
them are pirates ; and they are all united in a sort of inde- 
pendent republic." Their relations with the Acadians 
were of a mixed sort. They continually encroached on 

12 



Acadian fishing-groimds, and we hear at one time of a 
hundred of their vessels thus engaged. They often 
landed and traded with the Indians along the^ coast. 
Meneval, the governor, complained bitterly of their arro- 
gance. Sometimes, it is said, they pretended to be for- 
eign pirates, and plundered vessels and settlements, 
while the aggrieved parties could get no redress at Bos- 
ton. They also carried on a regular trade at Port Eoyal 
and Les Mines or Grand Pre, where many of the in- 
habitants regarded them with a degree of favor which 
gave great umbrage to the military authorities, who, 
nevertheless, are themselves accused of seeking their 
own profit by dealings with the heretics. The settlers 
caught from the "Bostonnais" what their governor 
stigmatizes as English and parliamentary ideas, the 
chief effect of which was to make them restive under his 
rule. The Church, moreover, was less successful in ex- 
cluding heresy from Acadia than from Canada. A num- 
ber of Huguenots established themselves at Port Royal, 
and formed sympathetic relations with the Boston^ Puri- 
tans. The bishop at Quebec was much alarmed. ''This 
is dangerous," he writes; "I pray your Majesty to put 
an end to these disorders." 

''Men know little of the consequences of their actions. 
It was the Stuart policy of religious intolerance at home 
and of allowing colonies as safety valves for dissent winch 
laid the sure foundation of the future United States." 

—Camhridge Modern History. 

After the Peace of Utrecht 
Francis Parkman 

"Along the borders of the sea an adverse power was 
strengthening with slow hut steadfast growth. By name, 
local position and character, one community stands forth 
as the conspicuous representative of this antagonism- 
Liberty and Absolutism, New England and New France. 

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After the Peace of Utreclit, in 1713, the contest between 
France and England in America divided itself into 
three parts, — the Acadian contest ; the contest for north- 
ern New England ; the contest for the West. Nothing is 
more striking- than the contrast in the conduct and 
methods of the rival claimants to this wild but magnifi- 
cent domain. Each was strong in its own qualities, and 
utterly wanting- in the (jualities that marked his opponent. 

On maps of British America in the earlier part of the 
eighteenth century, one sees the eastern shore, from 
Maine to Georgia, garnished with ten or twelve colored 
l)atches, defined, more or less distinctly, by dividing-lines 
which in some cases are prolonged westward till they 
touch the Mississippi, or even cross it and stretch on in- 
definitely. These patches are the British provinces, and 
the westward prolongation of their boundary lines rep- 
resents their several claims to vast interior tracts, 
founded on ancient grants but not made good by occupa- 
tion, or vindicated by any exertion of power. 

These English communities took little thought of the 
region beyond the AUeghanies. Each lived a life of its 
own, shut within its own limits, not dreaming- of a future 
collective greatness to which the possession of the West 
would be a necessary condition. No conscious community 
of aims and interests held them together, nor was there 
any authority capable of uniting their forces and turning 
them to a common object. Each province remained in 
jealous isolation, busied with its own work, growing in 
strength, in the capacity of self-rule and tlie spirit of in- 
dependence, and stubbornly resisting all exercise of 
authority from without. If the English-speaking pojui- 
lation flowed westward, it was in obedience to natural 
laws, for the King did not aid the movement, the royal 
governors had no authority to do so, and the colonial as- 
semblies were too much engrossed with innnediate local 
interests. The power of these colonies was that of a 

14 



rising flood slowly invading by the unconscious force of 
growing volume. 

In the French colonies all was ditferent. Here the 
representatives of the Crown were men bred in an atmos- 
phere of broad ambition and far-reaching enterprise. 
Achievement was demanded of them. They recognized 
the greatness of the prize, studied the strong and weak 
points of their rivals, and with a cautious forecast and a 
daring energy set themselves to the task of defeating 
them. 

If the Englisli colonies were comparatively strong in 
numbers their numbers could not be brought into action ; 
while if the French forces were small, they were vigor- 
ously commanded, and always ready at a word. It was 
union confronting division, energy confronting apathy, 
military centralization o]^posed to industrial democracy; 
and, for a time, the advantage was all on one side. 

The demands of the French were sufficiently compre- 
hensive. They regretted their enforced concessions at 
the Treaty of Utrecht, and, in spite of that compact, main- 
tained that, with a few local exceptions along the Atlantic 
Shore, the whole North American continent, except 
Mexico, was theirs of right ; while their opponents seemed 
neither to understand the situation, nor to recognize the 
greatness of the stakes at issue. 

''The Articles in the Treatij of Utrecht which dealt 
ivith cessions mcide by France to Great Britain in the New 
World are justly regarded as the real beginnings of the 
expansion of the British Colonial Empire in America — 
hence, also, of the United States and its democracij. It 
was a notable event accordingly in the view-point of 
World History when, by the Treaty's terms, Acadia— 
save Cape Breton Island— was assigned to England." 

— Cambridge Modern History. 



15 



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